Saturday, April 29, 2017

12 MONKEYS: Season 3 Teaser: Updated thoughts…

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My third installment of trailer breakdown crazy talk. If you’ve got the time, please check out the first ramble (covering the trailer bits from start to finish).

This post is going to include some more thoughts on the first clips of Cole in the post-apoc, the meaning of one of Cole's line that seems to be about passing on some undesirable traits to his son, a description of how to Kat and James can back at/to the future, a connection between the Witness's ensemble and the Black Hats' Time Vests, and—surprise surprise—probably a few tangents.

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James and the Giant Fork

Early in the trailer, we see James standing outside the Splinter facility, time tuning fork in hand, the camera moving around him just a bit. The trailer then cuts to him standing in what looks to be a post-apoc Times Square. The camera is behind him in this shot, but still moving around him just a bit.

I rambled a bit about the possible functionality of the Time Fork—that it enhances his “James Cole doesn’t need a time machine” abilities, allowing him to induce and better navigate red-leaf-tea zone visits at will—but didn’t realize that we were being shown proof of it in those clips.

What if those clips are part of the same camera move around Cole, and what’s happening is that he is scrolling through time and space, similar to how 2044 Jennifer guided Katarina through spacetime during their mad red tea party. So, the full scene would start w/the camera in front of Cole, with the lab behind him. Then the camera moves in a circle with Cole its focus in the center while time and space change around him, showing us what he sees as he messes w/the 4-way rocker switch on his Time Fork controller, attempting to dial in a specific moment and location.

I suspect that this ability may only be a form of mental/astral projection, allowing him to see and hear what happens at a certain time and place, but not actually physically visit. MAYbe with some practice he can possess someone other than himself, tho, and affect things via a host body, the way the Witness can and has.

Time Fork? Time Trident? Time Bident? Timedent? Time Tongs? Chrono-prong?

COLE: If there's something wrong with him, he got it from me…

Cole apparently wants to take responsibility for his son’s darkness or wrongness…

As Hank Hill would say—That boy ain’t right.

However, I want to believe that line of Cole’s about his son getting something wrong from his side of the family isn’t be about guilt or self-hate or a darkness within him, but an actual physiological issue. Cole’s pretty literally a freak of nature right now. The oldest Splinter-based time traveler around, known to Primaries of several generations, only known survivor of a personal physical paradox, and mental time traveler.

What if he’s concerned about passing on some dangerous condition to his boy? Hrm…When we’ve seen the Witness in his tricked out Plague Doctor get-up, there’s been…machinery, right? Possibly something along the lines of a respirator or life support. Maybe that’s exactly what it is. Maybe the child of two time skippers is fated to be formidable in the mental and temporal planes, but frail in the physical one?

Or better/worse yet, what if he’s worried about passing on special abilities?

What if what’s important about little Hot Pocket is not that he *is* the Witness, or grows up to be the Witness, but that he’s the ideal *vessel* for the Witness. As the offspring of two Splinternauts, one of them uniquely favored by Time (as Lillian put it—James Cole don’t need no stinkin’ time machine!), it would come as no surprise if Jimmy, Jr. exhibited abilities similar to his parents, the Messengers, and even Primaries, and perhaps some beyond them.

Back to the 80s =)

I like to think so many things about this. I’m really hoping it’s not just 15 seconds out of a 2 minute montage that shows Team Splinter walking thru the Emerson in eight different eras wearing eight sets of characteristic wardrobe.

I love that James is basically dressed as Marty McFly, a callback to season 1…

COLE: Still don't believe me, do you?

AARON: I believe this cult is real, but no, I don't think you're Marty McFly.

COLE: Who?

Is there any way they’re doing a 21 JUMP STREET, infiltrating a high school dance or prom at the hotel? Please o please? =)

What would the prom theme or song be—”Time After Time?” “The Time to Remember?” “We’ve Got Tonight?” “The Power of Love?” =)

What are the odds that Jennifer Goines put together everyone’s ensembles for this particular mission?

If they’re stuck in the 80s for a while, with some downtime, Jennifer should really be taking them on field trips to the movies. If not for simple entertainment value, then as educational resources, so that the rest of Team Splinter can better understand Primary Jennifer’s eccentric way of expressing herself.

The clock on the mantel in room 607 is also frozen on 10:04, right? Will we get to see the moment/reason that stopped the Emerson’s clocks? In my earlier post, I wondered if we might meet Agent Gale’s granddaughter, Roberta…

Maybe she’s inspired by the Emerson’s clocks to add that detail to her screenplay for BACK TO THE FUTURE? =)

Getting Back at/to the Future!

I’ve got a good scenario to go with this moment…

At the end of season 2, we see Cole get into the chair and splinter away. The splinter beam is blue-white, same as it’s always been when Jones sends someone to the *past.” I imagine that what Jones does next is get in the chair herself after setting the controls to splinter her to the same coordinates as Cole—Raritan National Laboratory, sometime between 2015 and 2040, let’s say 2024, just for the heck of it.

The image above is what greets them…Project: Splinter…mothballed. Remember, after Ramse’s henchman is found dead in the lab, Elliot Jones’s project is shut down (thus freeing him up to work on Titan). In the wake of the spreading plague, the facility would be shut down, secured, but unmanned.

Why would Kat and James jump back to a time when Splinter was shut down? So that they could use the machine to splinter into the future! Remember, Elliot Jones’s machine succeeded in sending Cassandra Railly (and English ivy) decades into the future. Note that the splinter beam for those events appeared gold, not blue. We see a golden splinter seconds later in the teaser…
Remember…

GOLD : to the future

BLUE : to the past

GREEN: to the present (time travel without the time =)

RED: failure/malfunction?

I suggest that when Katarina and the rest of her team revived the Beast in the 2040s, and configured it for travel into the past, they disabled its to-the-future capability. Perhaps it’s still possible in 2044, but would require significant mechanical and electronic overhaul, practically impossible for Jones without her team.

So, in order for James to make a jump ahead to catch Titan in the future, he needs to jump back to 2024, so that he can jump forward to 2163.

And in that shot of the cloaked Beast, we’re seeing Katarina first arriving in 2024.

At least, that’s my theory. It could also be that 2163, or some other year, post-2044, after she and Team Splinter have had to leave the temporal facility for an extended time, maybe even before it happens in her personal timeline.

But I really like the idea of one step backward, two steps forward to get to the future. =)

From the Witness’s Suit to the Black Hats’ Vests…

Somewhere in my 12 MONKEYS ramblings, I wondered about the Witness’s need for a life support apparatus. The first few times we see him on the show, the mask seemed like it might decorative, serving to hide his identity while instilling fear in those who see him, as well as associate him with plague doctors, and so, plagues.

In later appearances, we see that the mask seems to be sealed, its sockets holding eyepieces/lenses, and its “beak” connected via hoses to a breathing apparatus under his robe, attached to his body. So, the Witness wears some kind of life support or encounter suit. Why?

I had several thoughts…

1. His travels thru time have taken a physical toll on his health and body. Also in line with that, he may be extremely long lived, and although he may be aging slowly, he’s lived long enough that even the serum-enhanced metabolism passed down to him from his parents can only do so much in the face of centuries of life.

2. The suit and mask provide enhancements to his natural or scientifically augmented time-associated abilities—mental and physical time travel as well as some kind of vision. Maybe it provides him a controllable dose of red leaf extract on demand to activate and/or supe up those powers. Like Time-Bane.

3. The suit and mask provide protection from paradox exposure and reality rewrites. This is the most game-changing possibility, so of course, it’s the one I really love. =)

This would mean that he could interact with himself in other moments of his personal timeline without any danger of pain or paradox. The suit completely contains his…essence, so that when he is in the same room with himself at a different age, the universe doesn’t detect two of him in the same place, and so doesn’t “know” to trigger a paradox event.

This might lead to some perilous narrative knots, but knowing Terry and company, those knots would only lead to amazing ways of resolving them. I won’t go down those rabbit holes just now. Maybe in another post.
What does the Witness’s spacetimesuit have to do with the Time Vests we see on the Black Hats (Time Shadows?) and Evil Annie Lennox? Well, I’m thinking that these vests are the next generation version of the Witness’s gear, allowing the wearer to travel thru time and affect changes without altering his or her personal history or any danger of paradox. I think this is also a clue that we’ll be dealing with a new player in the Time War in season 3—a faction/society/culture from a future farther off than 2163—

OLIVIA: …the very edge of time…an inch from falling over…

—possibly even an alternate, or earlier, timeline (a longshot, I think), or a kind of limbo, outside of time (not as much of a long shot). They would be the great grandchildren of time travel and a threat to both the Witness’s Army and Team Splinter.